Series Introduction

Between 18 May and 11 November 1918, 75 non-commissioned officers and 375 privates were certified in advanced infantry training courses offered at the Overseas Depot at Marine Barracks Quantico as scout snipers (see McClellan 1920; reprint 1968, 27). This two-week course extended the mechanics and skills of precision marksmanship these Marines already had learned with classes in observation, camouflage and concealment, and stalking and, as such, mark the origins of what would be the now 105-year tradition that ended with the graduating classes at School of Infantry-West in September, Quantico in October, and the School of Infantry-East in December 2023.

Blast From the Past is an ongoing series that will showcase individual Marine scout snipers from their origins in 1918 through continued service in the Marine Corps after 2023.
_____________________________________________

Blast #1 Jack Kneeland

Jack KneelandWe don’t know much about Private Jack Kneeland, a Parris Island Marine and vaudeville performer before and after World War I. What we do know from him is he was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines’ scout snipers and one of dozens of Marine scout snipers who served in the war to save the world for democracy ahead of their school trained brothers at the Overseas Depot at Marine Barracks Quantico.

Kneeland enlisted shortly after the United States declared war on Germany and was sworn in on 21 April 1917. He found himself in France in August and in combat in November when he was wounded for the first of what would be four times. In three different actions, Kneeland took shrapnel in his leg along the Flanders Front, a German sniper’s round to the head at Belleau Wood, and three rounds to his body at Château-Thierry. Kneeland later recalled the third action in his contribution to Henry Fox and N.L. Forrestal’s book What the "Boys" Did Over There:

"I at once took position in the limbs of a tree, so that I could notice any patrols that might pass. On our southern corner we saw a raiding party of Germans, fixing their machine guns to clean up a town…. We immediately opened fire on these men and picking off a large majority of them. Suddenly my comrade received a wound in the knee and fell to the ground. I descended and, picking him up, carried him safely to our lines, receiving at the same time three bullet wounds" (in Fox and Forrestal 1919, 129-30).

For this action, Kneeland and his scout sniper brother, Private Al Barker, received the silver star for the Victory Medal.

In his last encounter with the Germans, at Château-Thierry in July 1918, Kneeland and the 147 Marines still walking in 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines were gassed. “I was one of the unlucky ones and received a big dose of it," he later wrote. “It fairly burned the cloths from my back, blinding me instantly, and deafened me" (in Fox and Forrestal 1919, 130).

Kneeland returned to show business following the war. His vaudeville act, Jack Kneeland and the Merrymakers, played into the 1930s live on the radio and on stage in Canada and across all 48 states. He was a travelling member of the America Federation of Musicians.

References

Fox, Henry L. and N.L. Forrestal, editors. 1919. What the “Boys” Did Over There: By “Themselves.” New York, NY: Allied Overseas Veterans’ Stories Co.

McClellan, Edwin N. 1920. The United States Marine Corps in the World War. Washington DC: Historical Branch, G-3 Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps.